Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Well it's been a while between reviews! Finally I'm back with a little Rothrock to entertain. I'm also going to dispose with the Quick Blast titles on shorter reviews and just let the reviews speak for themselves, be they long, short or a one line "Worst. Movie. Ever." Hope you enjoy.

Cynthia Rothrock is Susan Morgan, "The Golden Angel", a boxer who is married to a famous Indonesian soccer star Sonny Sumarto (George Rudy). After successful matches for both of them, the couple fly back from LA to Jakarta, but at the airport their bags are switched with ruthless diamond thief Diego (Billy Drago) and his merry band of cohorts, Jack (Gret Stuart) and Reb (Sam J. Jones, looking like he's walked off the set of one of his many Vietnam war movies, bandana and all).

After returning home, Diego and co. break in to their house looking for the diamonds but neither are forthcoming, so Jack and Sam break Sonny's legs and Diego rapes Susan. That's not the end of it; Diego and co. come back day after day (unbelievably there are no police guarding the house) looking for the diamonds, and one day when Susan is out, Diego brutally kills poor wheelchair-bound Sonny. This sets Susan on an inevitable and incurable path of one-woman's-revenge!

"You're not gonna get inside my head, fucker!"

I had fun with this. It was far darker than I was expecting; even the cheap synth soundtrack was moody. I guess any movie that opens with a rape in the first fifteen minutes isn't going to be laugh-a-minute. It get's quite bleak during and after Sonny's funeral where we learn that his was an icon among his native village; they even thrust a one legged kid on crutches in our face to make the point of the revenge more obvious. A strange Indonesian priestess (I think) says Susan looks like a woman with revenge in her heart - ain't that the truth. She has three people to kill!

Drago is an evil slimeball in this. He plays the character really well and you just love to hate him. His mannerisms are quite sickly and I got creepy shivers whenever he (repeatedly) said "There's my pretty, pretty, pretty.." to Rothrock's character, or called her on the phone to stalk her. I still don't get how stupid he was returning to the scene of the crime at least four times in the movie, but I digress. Jack is a bit of a nothing character sadly and is dispatched first by Susan as she dressed like Marilyn Monroe and seduces him in an elevator - with his own belt tied around his neck, if you follow me. Sam Jones' Reb seems like he is high on the best drugs ever throughout the whole film, continually laughing at his own shadow. Even Diego get's annoyed at this and slaps him around a few times.

Rothrock is her usual great self and gets at least five decent fights in the film, and a car chase that shows the same car explode SIX TIMES from different angles! The first fight is hilarious as she dresses as a streetwalker to get information from a random pimp who attacks her with a sword. She of course fights the three main bad guys, and the final one with Diego is pretty damn good. You know a final fight is going to be good when it's held in an Indonesian steelworks. And you just know that somebody is going to go into the open oven, and it's not going to be the film's heroine.

"How do you like your murderers; medium or well done?"

A solid revenge-thriller with plenty of good B-action set-pieces. Directed by David Worth, best known for directing Kickboxer and Bloodsport - movies not that far removed from Angel of Fury.

Highlight:

Definitely the moment when Susan and Reb square off down at the shipping docks. Susan kidnaps Reb from the mens room at a fancy restaurant and forces him to drive at gunpoint. He manages to break free and after a cat and mouse chase between shipping containers, Susan catches up with him and knocks him to the ground. Injured and unable to move, Susan drops a container from a conveniently placed crane onto Reb squishing him flat. He laughs his manic laugh right up until he becomes a pancake.